Hidden Heroines of Film Costume History

This is a guest post by Alice Sage, a a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, working on the project Film Costumes in Action recording histories of film costume in Britain from 1965-2015. With a background in cultural and social history, she’s most interested in the personal stories and craftsmanship that goes into dressing movies.

 

Costuming a film is a team effort — the costume designers usually get the credit (or the shade), but they are the head of a whole department of skilled people that get the clothes onto actors on time, in budget, and hopefully with some flair.

I’m a researcher on the project Film Costumes in Action, which sets out to record histories of costuming film in Britain, beyond just designers to include the makers, supervisors, assistants and stand-bys who work hard behind the scenes.

I’ve been creating Wikipedia pages for about 25 costume workers and counting. Why Wikipedia? Because it is the first place that many people go to find information on a person or film. It has a massive readership, simple editing tools, and is Open Access to all. Only 20% of Wikipedia’s biographies are of women — and our work also tackles that information gender gap, as documented by Women in Red and Art + Feminism.

In this post I want to tell you about Jean Hunnisett, Annie Hadley, and Rosemary Burrows — three women who will never be as famous as the designers they worked with, but who were absolutely essential to the success of the movies they worked on. These women worked at the top of their games, whose skills and talents set the bar for historic accuracy, dressed literal armies of extras, and shaped the bodies of superstars.

 

 

Jean Hunnisett (1927-1996)

Jean Hunnisett’s contribution to film was her determination for historical accuracy. She was one of the first who actually went into the archives of the V&A Museum in London and measured, sketched, and photographed original clothing.

I first learned about Jean from the designer John Bloomfield, as she made the costumes that he designed for The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1969) — the BBC production that launched a thousand period dramas. John relied on her knowledge of period shapes and her ability to make them, within the straightened budgets of British television. For Six Wives and Elizabeth R the following year, Hunnisett miraculously made whole wardrobes of dresses that convincingly matched what would have taken Tudor dressmakers months to sew and embellish by hand.

In the 1970s, Hunnisett worked freelance from her own workshop, making specific costumes for designers who would send a brief and expect her to come up with the goods. Her film credits during this period included The Slipper and the Rose (1976), Joseph Andrews (1977), The Riddle of the Sands (1979) and The Corn Is Green (1979), as well as BBC television productions like Doctor Who.

From the 1980s to her death in 2003, Hunnisett worked to secure her legacy in a series of books Period Costume for Stage & Screen, a compendium of patterns and instructions for historical costumers.

 

 

Annie Hadley (1939-2010)

Annie Hadley was a costume cutter with exceptional talent, known for her no-nonsense attitude and uncompromising standards. She brought her genius for shaping garments to the top costume movies of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The job of the cutter is to make the costume design into a wearable three-dimensional reality and make it fit the actor and look flattering. Sometimes they get a drawing to work from, but usually they have a mood board and some chats with the designer, and then they start draping on a model.

Annie was the ‘go-to cutter’ of the 1990s and was the secret sauce for so many Oscar-winning films. First with Jim Acheson (Brazil, 1985; Highlander, 1986; The Last Emperor, 1987, Dangerous Liaisons, 1988), then with Sandy Powell and Colleen Atwood, she brought her sculptural and bold cutting to bring to life designers’ distinctive visions in a series of big frock flicks: Interview With the Vampire, Evita, Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Other Boleyn Girl.

Sandy Powell rated Annie’s flair for cutting so highly that she had Annie tailor her awards outfits. When Powell won the Best Costume Oscar for The Aviator (2004), she wore a green version of Cate Blanchett’s dress from the film and name-checked Annie in her acceptance speech as her ‘partner in crime.’

Annie was never impressed by celebrity, even though she worked with the biggest names on the planet – but working in the fitting room meant she got up close and personal with the stars’ bodies. Apparently, she noticed Madonna’s pregnancy during the filming of Evita (1996, costume design by Penny Rose) before anyone else knew — and then she had to come up with solutions to hide the growing baby bump under fur coats, opera capes, and strategically buttoned dresses.

Annie leaves a massive legacy of gorgeous gowns and Oscar-winning outfits. Next time you watch a 1990s British costume banger, check the credits, because the cutter was probably Annie Hadley.

 

 

Rosemary Burrows

Rosemary Burrows was a legendary costume supervisor who organised the costumes for over 100 films. The supervisor is the administrative power of the costume department — they manage the budgets, the transport, and the teams. When asked about her career, Rosemary said her job was “trucks, tents, and toilets, darling!” but she identified completely with her work, even signing her faxes and Christmas cards with her nickname “FROX.”

Rosemary started as wardrobe assistant at Hammer Horror’s Bray Studios in the 1950s, pulling costumes together on a shoestring for films like Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959), starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, through to lurid 1970s fare like Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb (1971). Many of the movies she worked on, even into the late 1970s, didn’t have costume designers, so Rosemary’s role as wardrobe supervisor meant sourcing outfits from costume houses, consulting with the Art Director, and working with actors to develop their characters. She also turned her hand to breakdown and dying, alterations, and on-set continuity. These films were the bread-and-butter of the movie industry, and they provided action and entertainment.

In the behind-the-scenes documentary for the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, Rosemary makes a scene-stealing appearance [from 54:00 — check it out on YouTube]. She’s hilarious describing how they made up the Soviet uniforms because the Russian embassy wouldn’t let them see the real ones.

From the 1980s onwards, a new generation of costume designers relied on Rosemary’s experience, including Judy Moorcroft (Passage to India, 1984), Janty Yates (Gladiator, 2000), and Sammy Sheldon-Differ (V for Vendetta, 2005). I have a great soft spot for her films with Anthony Powell — including Death on the Nile (1978), Evil Under the Sun (1982), 101 Dalmatians (1996), and 102 Dalmatians (2000) – films that show the flamboyant and fabulous possibilities of period dress.

Rosemary was a formidable character – very old-school, always wearing in a cashmere sweater and pearls whether dressing an army of Ancient Britons in Gladiator or setting up tents in the desert for Passage to India. She travelled the world as a costume supervisor, and wrote postcards every day to her husband, the stuntman Eddie Powell.

 

 

Thanks to Alice and her colleagues for highlighting the important work of these costumers!